[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14787-14788]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



            THE NECESSITY OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL STATUTE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuykendall). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Vermont (Mr. Sanders), who is from my committee, for allowing me to 
interrupt his one hour special order.
  Mr. Speaker, today the Independent Counsel statute expires. There has 
been a real heralding by many people in the legal community for the 
demise of this law. I would like to tonight talk just a little bit 
about that law and why something like it is absolutely necessary.
  For the past 3 years my committee has been investigating illegal 
campaign contributions. We are now involved in investigating espionage 
and lack of security at our nuclear laboratories, and the possibility 
that these things had something in common.
  One of the biggest problems that we have had has been a reluctance by 
the Justice Department, under Janet Reno, to cooperate with our 
committee. It has been extremely difficult to get the Justice 
Department to work with us to get to the bottom of these scandals.
  If we have an administration that has broken the law, if we have an 
administration or people in an administration who have become corrupt, 
and we have an Attorney General who is appointed by the President who 
is blocking for the administration, how do we administer justice? How 
do we get to the bottom of illegal activities, if we have an 
administration that has broken the law and a Justice Department that is 
controlled by the administration who will not bring those who broke the 
law to justice?
  I think that that is what we have today. We have had a number of 
people that have taken the Fifth Amendment. Our committee has faced 
over 121 people who have taken the Fifth Amendment or fled the country 
in the campaign finance scandal, 121 people. That is unparalleled in 
American history.
  We have asked the Justice Department and Janet Reno time and time and 
time again to work with us to bring these people before the committee 
to explain to the American people why Communist China, Macao,

[[Page 14788]]

Egypt, Taiwan, South American countries, have been giving campaign 
contributions to the Democrat National Committee and the President's 
reelection committee, and we have gotten absolutely no cooperation from 
the Justice Department.
  In fact, if Members look at the administration and the Justice 
Department, we will find they have, in effect, erected a stone wall 
between what happened and the American people. How do we break through 
that stone wall? What mechanism do we use to bring people to justice 
who broke the law, who may have even endangered America's national 
security?
  The only way we can do that is to have somebody outside the system 
investigate and prosecute those people who have broken the law. 
Unfortunately, now that we no longer have an Independent Counsel 
statute, we have no mechanism with which to do that.
  Maybe the Independent Counsel statute was flawed, maybe there were 
some problems with it, but it should have been perfected, in my 
opinion, so there was a mechanism to investigate people in an 
administration that might be corrupt without going through the person 
that they appoint to be the Attorney General who might be blocking for 
them, as I believe has been the case with this Attorney General and 
this Justice Department.
  So tonight I am one of those voices, I am sure, that is crying in the 
wilderness, because I believe we need something like an Independent 
Counsel statute to ensure that justice will be done in this country.
  Right now, now that the Independent Counsel statute has expired, if 
we have a president now or in the future who breaks the law or if we 
have people in his administration who break the law, and the President 
has appointed an Attorney General who is willing to block for him and 
keep the facts from coming out where there might have been corruption, 
then there is nothing that can be done for the American people to count 
on to bring these people to justice.
  So I would just like to say that although the Independent Counsel 
statute may have had some flaws, we should not have junked the whole 
thing, we should have found an alternative. I am sorry that we did not.

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